


Ruinous

by SummerLeighWind (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Arguing, Babies, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Crying, Death Eaters, Domestic Violence, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hogwarts, Homosexuality, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Late Night Conversations, Late at Night, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Minor Character(s), Murder, One Shot Collection, Panic Attacks, Siblings, Suicide, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 01:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5314682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/SummerLeighWind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of unrelated stories that focus on those who were a part of the first war and their lives during that time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Bow is to Admit Defeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character(s): Bellatrix Lestrange and Rodolphus Lestrange
> 
> Relationship(s): Bellatrix/Rodolphus

It is one of the quiet nights. An evening for the Lord's plotting and even they - the most  _faithful_ \- are kept out of their master's rooms. The Lord does not trust - especially now when he feels there is a spy within their ranks. Even Rodolphus cannot scoff at the possibility these days. Someone's tipping  _somebody_ off, if not their targets, the Order.

Too many have been escaping their planned demise within an inch of a knife's deadly point for it not to hold a grain of truth. Too many of their own are ending up dead on the wrong side of a curse when they should be the one with the upper hand. Who, though, is the traitor has yet to be discovered. His wife, Bellatrix, has her suspicions and voices them often to their Lord and even her suspects, but nothing has been done about it yet.

Rodolphus doubts anything ever will, sometimes.

"Would you quit that racket!" his wife snaps from where she's nursing a glass of wine upon the room's settee.

Staring at the woman he'd fought to make his bride in youthful lust, Rodolphus pauses in his tapping of his foot against the cherry-wood leg of his armchair.

"Hm?" he questions.

Glaring at him, the woman hisses, "Do not play the buffoon, Rodolphus!"

"I don't know what you mean," he replies as he begins to tap his foot once again. He's long since stopped caring about staying on Bellatrix's "good" side. He is a man, not a dog, and he will not pretend to be one to keep her satisfied.

Standing, Bellatrix, face twisted with spiteful anger, throws her glass at the lit hearth of their parlor.

Eyes going to the mess of chardonnay dripping down the sallow walls, he murmurs mournfully, "What a waste."

" _Cease your tapping_!" the woman shrills when, once again, Rodolphus begins to tap his foot.

Setting his chin in a stubborn tilt, the man refuses. "I will not," he says, "you can leave."

Eyes taking on the wild gleam he usually only sees when they are about to go on a mission for their Lord, Bellatrix draws her wand and screams, " _Sectumsempra!_ "

Rodolphus slips from his chair, narrowly missing the possibly fatal spell as he cast a wordless knock-back jinx of his own upon his wife.

She, much like him, dodges his spell and snarls, " _Ossis Effergo_!"

Still crouched low, Rodolphus doesn't have the time or leverage to completely get out of harms way before the jet blue light hits him near the shoulder.

Giving a strangled noise as he feels his collarbone snap in two, the man collapses in a heap upon the ground.

Approaching with a victorious grin, Bellatrix uses her pretty white toes to jab his broken collar bone. This draws another hoarse cry from Rodolphus, but he, so very furious with his wife, spits, "You _bitch_."

"Tut-tut,  _love_ , you'd think you'd have learned some manners after a broken collar bone," she remarks, tone one of condescension.

Straining upward despite the pain it causes him, Rodolphus growls, "Never, my  _dear_."

Picking her foot up again in a flash, Bellatrix brings it down hard on Rodolphus's groin.

Shouting his pain as he curls inward despite the full body agony it puts him through, the man raises his head upward and  _spits_ on his wife's feet.

Angrily, Bellatrix demands with her wand pointed at him, "Why do you fight me still! I have bested you!"

Leering at the woman, he replies, "I guess I'm just one of those chosen by God to rub salt in the cut to know in my gut I'm alive..."

"What's that supposed to mean?" his wife demands as she idly begins to tap her wand upon her thigh.

Vision blurring from the pain he is in, Rodolphus cannot stop the chuckle that vibrates through him - or the sharp, piercing torment that nearly blinds him because of it. "I won't ever stop," he declares, "I will always fight - no matter the pain it causes - so that I will never lose. I will make war until I am dead if it will mean that I never have to be the one to give up."

It will be his proof to himself (and others) that he is not the kind of man that is affected by the world, but that  _he_ is the one affecting  _it_.

Pursing her lips, Bellatrix says, "Go to sleep, Rodolphus," before knocking him out with the necessary spell.

Darkness flooding his vision, Rodolphus grins.

He is triumphant.


	2. Cleaved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character(s): Edward Bones's children
> 
> Relationship(s): N/A

The dead faces of his parents, grandparents and youngest brother waiting for him behind his eyelids, Thad Bone turned beneath the freshly laundered sheets of his uncle's guest room. It had been a week since most of his family had been murdered by Death Eaters and his burning anger had yet to settle in the slightest. He was still furious that he'd missed fighting the Death Eaters by just second and even more so with his sister Maisie for casting a Jelly-Leg Jinx on him to keep him from confronting the villains.

If only she hadn't, he might have been able to catch one - maybe even kill them. But, instead, his twelve-year-old sister knocked him down and silenced them both with another spell. She made him watch the Death Eaters exit his family's home and disapparate away.

Now, instead of getting to hunt down his family's killers, he was being kept in hiding with his uncle, his wife and his little sister as they waited for his sister's disciplinary hearing for use of magic while under age.

He doubted anyone would seriously punish her for her use of magic outside of school - especially since she was so young and a part of such a well-known family. Her reason was also quite admirable, when you got down to it.

Not that Thad cared.

He was just so  _mad_.

Staring across the darkness of the room to the bed where his little sister lay, he said, "Tomorrow, after your hearing, I'm going to leave to look for the bastards who killed our family."

Thad saw his sister toss off her sheets. Sitting up then, the girl left her bed and started for the door.

Shooting up, Thad demanded, "What are you doing?"

The girl turned and from the dim light filtering in from the starlit sky outside, Thad could see her eyes were large with tears clinging to her lashes.

"I'm telling Aunt Lucile and Uncle John," she said.

Lunging from his spot, Maisie hardly opened the door before he wrapped himself around her and dragged her back to his bed.

"Don't you fucking dare," he hissed into her ear. "They have nothing to do with this!"

Fighting his hold, his sister glared at him with pitiful brown eyes before chomping into his palm. Jerking his hand back, his sister managed to escape his hold.

Smoothing out her nightgown then, Maisie shouted in a whisper, "Yes they do, Thad! They're our aunt and uncle!"

"It's your fault!" Thad snarled, "If you hadn't been such a weak  _rat_  and kept me from chasing down their killers, we wouldn't be going to a hearing for you using magic, but their trial!"

Lip quivering, Maisie's shoulders squeezed in as her knees buckled. Hunched over the ground sobbing, she wailed, "You can't, Thad! You're all I have left! You just can't!"

Thad didn't want to be moved, he didn't want to feel badly. He didn't want to be made to re-think his plan. So, to appease his little sister, Thad came up with a lie.

"Maisie..." he mumbled in a soft voice, "Stop...Stop, okay? Look, don't be stupid, okay? There's no way I'm going to find their exact killers tomorrow. I'm just going to ask around to find out who's working there case and see if they have any ideas...I'll be coming home with you, Aunt Lucile and Uncle John."

Looking up, her dark eyes framed by stringy red hair, she asked in a small, hopeful voice, "Really? You'll come home tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Thad agreed with a fleeting smile. Going to the table beside his bed, he opened the drawer and pulled out his father's watch. Thrusting it at her, he said, "Look, I can  _promise_ you solemnly I'll come home tomorrow because I'll be coming back for Papa's watch."

Looking between the silver-framed watch face and her brother, Maisie grinned. Slipping it over her twig like wrist, the girl launched herself at her brother and squeezed him with all her might.

"Thank you, Thad! Thank you!" she whimpered into his shirt.

Making himself relax, he hugged Maisie just as tightly. This might be the last time he ever got to, he knew. "Yeah, Maisie, Yeah," Thad muttered into her peach-scented locks.

Letting her go, he told her, "Now, go back to bed. We got a long day ahead of us tomorrow."

Wiping at her eyes, the girl agreed, "Okay. Love you,"

Closing his eyes, Thad saw his mum, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa and his little brother, Christopher. He loved them all, just the same as Maisie. Their killers deserved to pay for murdering those he loved.

"Love you too, Maisie," he whispered.

The next day, Thad slipped out of his sister's hearing and didn't come back.

Four days later, his dismembered body was found behind a rubbish bin.

Two days after her brother's funeral, Maisie Bones was found dead with her legs and arms slit in her aunt's bathroom.

Her papa's silver watch was clutched in one hand and a picture of the entire Bones family in the other.


	3. Late Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character(s): Alice Longbottom, Frank Longbottom, and Neville Longbottom
> 
> Relationship(s): Alice/Frank Longbottom

Her son's shrill cries waking her husband, Alice puts a hand on his arm before he can so much as lift his head from his pillow.

"I got it," she tells him.

He sighs. "Are you sure? It's supposed to be my night," he reminds her.

"Yes, Frank, I'm sure," she insists as she slips out from beneath the bed covers. "I got it."

Sheets rustling some more behind her as her husband turns, he stares at her with a slumber-fuzzed gaze. "Have you gotten any sleep at all, Alice?" he asks.

Tugging on a pair of slippers as she prepares to brave the cold wood of the hall's floor, the woman doesn't bother to lie. Frank will know she is, anyway. "No," she replies. "Don't you try and tell me to lie back down now, either, Frank. Sooner or later I'll crash and you'll be in charge of Neville."

"It's not healthy…" he mumbles hesitantly.

Up on her feet now, Alice turns and gives her husband an exhausted scowl. "Neither is refusing to go into hiding, but here we are, aren't we?"

Sitting up in less than a blink of an eye, Frank glares back at her. "You agreed you didn't want to live like that either, Alice. Don't try and accuse me of being at fault here. We both came to this decision, not just me!"

Fingers curling into fists, Alice was ready to really get into it with her husband when a particularly ear-splitting wail caught her attention. Neville needed her.

Rolling back her shoulders as she sucked in a breath, Alice says to Frank, "Neville needs me."

Frank looks no more pleased than she feels at this statement, but nods at her nonetheless. Neville will always come first.

Leaving behind her frustrated, overtired, scared husband, Alice goes to her son.

Coming into his room, she favors the tear-soaked face with a small smile. "What's wrong, baby?" she asks her son as she went to take him into her arms.

Unbuttoning the snaps of his pajamas, she checks his diaper as she coos at him. When she finds it dry, Alice questions, "Are you hungry, Neville?"

"Ba," he mumbles in response, his little fingers weaving into her hair.

Rubbing a calming hand up and down his back, Alice says, "Let's go find out, hm?"

And with that said, it's only a few minutes later she's sitting in one of the chairs in the kitchen, watching blandly as Neville gulps down his bottle.

Brushing her a hand through his fine hair, Alice leans in and gives it a deep sniff. It smells so sweet. A bit like honey, thanks to the baby shampoo she uses on him.

Smiling at him as he looks up at her with his beautiful doe eyes, she tells him, "Mummy loves you, Neville."

His lips curve up, even as he continues to suckle at his bottle.

Giving a breathy laugh at the sight, Alice is reminded that once again, her nights feeding her son might be numbered. With the war waging outside their home and the prophecy hanging over her little son's head, she knows it's only a matter of time before the Death Eater's try something.

When that day comes, Alice knows she might die. The Death Eaters will do anything and everything to get out of her where she will have hidden her son, but she'll never say. If nothing else, Neville will survive.

It will be the last thing she ever does, if it comes down to it.

Tears pooling in her eyes, Alice gives a quiet whimper as she thinks of all the things she'll miss. Her son's second birthday, the first time he brushes his teeth by himself, the Christmas Eves he'll wait up for Santa, his Hogwarts letter, meeting his first girlfriend, him graduating from Hogwarts, his wedding day, holding his newborn children...

Sobbing openly now, she berates herself by saying, "I'm crying for all the things I've told Frank to do without crying..."

What a hypocrite, she is.

"Mu," Neville mumbles around his bottle, reaching one little hand up to her face to touch the tears that fall down it. "No," he says. "No."

Dabbing at the tears, she brings her baby close and gives him a kiss and says, "Mummy will stop. Mummy's being silly, she knows."

Settling down, Neville lets the bottle fall from his lip. "Mu," he says.

"Neville," she whispers, giving his nose a kiss.

Giggling at this, the baby wraps his little fingers in her hair once again and pulls himself up into a sitting position.

Laughing herself now, Alice tells her son, "Maybe I won't be there for all those wonderful and not so wonderful moments, Neville, but I'm here now. I'll be here for you as long as I can."

And since she knows that it will be the best she can do, Alice pushes away her grief and chooses to focus on her son and the present. Her time is limited.


	4. Little Brothers are Always Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character(s): Original Male Character, Alecto Carrow, and Amycus Carrow
> 
> Relationship(s): N/A

Pip had always given others trouble.

From the time he was a little boy; when it was Jimmy's job to watch him, along with their other two other brothers, while they all played in the condemned tenement buildings with the rest of the neighborhood children. Pip, so fearless, so pigheaded, often could be found jumping from and scaling things no small boy should have the right to.

The fact Pip had always come away from his stunts with nary a scrape or bruise had always seemed like dumb luck to Jimmy.

Imagine his and the rest of their family's shock when the learned it wasn't luck, but  _magic_. Things had never been the same after that.

After Pip went off to his special school, was sorted into a house made for reckless and obstinate lads and lasses like himself, it seemed like the trouble he so easily found himself in tripled without Jimmy there to keep him in line. First, it was fights with a lad from another house, then, sneaking out after curfew. As the years progressed, his mischief became more varied. There were still fights, and more often than not, he was in detention for playing tricks on those monitoring the halls after curfew.

Then there was the trouble he got into with a number of girls, sneaking them off campus and such. He also had a penchant for breaking into something called the "restricted section" in his magic school's library to steal books he shouldn't be reading to read.

Pip's audacity exasperated his professors to no end. Jimmy knew, from his brother's letters, his mates only egged him on in his antics. They all thought it was a ball and none of his parents lecturing letters were going to change his behavior. Jimmy wanted to say them he told them so, but that would have had probably only earned him a slap from his mother and a box around the ear from his father. Neither of them would like hearing that their son, who'd been all of fourteen when his brother went to his magic school, was right. That letting Pip go had lead to more trouble than it was worth.

The worst of it, though, was Pip's trouble didn't stop at Hogwarts. No, after Hogwarts, fearless, fearless Pip continued to rock the boat by picking a side in the war his magic kind had found themselves in.

And that's why, Jimmy, a plain old  _rubbish man_ was now in trouble. God, he was just relieved his wife had gone to see her sister for the weekend.

He should have been angry, disappointed, saddened or - or  _something,_ but he wasn't. No, Jimmy was just resigned. He'd always known Pip was trouble and this situation he'd found himself in just drove that home.

"What do you think we should do to him?" one of the skeleton-faced specters asked of their cohort.

The other specter, one with a distinctly feminine form, switched her stick from hand to hand. "How about we cut off his nose?" she suggested.

The first made an appreciative noise. "Then we should also cut off his ears, maybe gouge out his eyeballs too. We could turn his face into the very skull that is part of our Lord's insignia, sister!"

"Bravo! What a clever idea, brother!" she praised as she brought her stick back to her left hand. Pointing it at Jimmy, she taunted, "Now, now, don't look so frightened! It will only hurt a lot!"

Jimmy closed his eyes.

Moments later, a soul-ripping scream was forced out of him as he felt his nose leave his face with one quick slice. Then another cry, and another, as all protruding bits from his face and head were shaved off.

Laughing and laughing, the feminine-formed devil said, "Now it's time for the eyes…"

Despite the pain, and the way blood had turned his vision blurry and red, he mumbled, "Don't…P-Pip will h-have learned his l-lesson from j-just this…"

The specters looked at each other. "Will he have?" the brother purred. "Somehow, I doubt it. That one flaunts his part in foiling our Lord at every turn. He'll probably feel all the more righteous if you live."

"Kill me now, then!" Jimmy begged. "God in heaven, just kill me!"

The sister raised her stick and for a moment, Jimmy hated Pip. But, then, he remembered the first time he held him after he was born. He didn't recall the twins's birth, having only been one at the time, but he'd nearly been four when Pip was born. He'd been so excited at the thought of yet another sibling and when he found out it was a boy? Well, Jimmy couldn't have been happier.

Or, at least he'd thought that until his mother put Pip in his arms. Then Pip had gripped one of his fingers in his newborn hand and Jimmy had been over the moon with love for him. Pip hadn't done that for anyone else yet, his mother had said. He was the first one his little brother had taken hold of and at three (almost four) he'd thought it meant something great. Something amazing.

Oh, how wrong he'd been.

It was a curse his brother had cast on him that day. He'd been the first he held in his hand and now he'd be the first to die.

Soon, Jimmy was once again overwhelmed with pain as one of his eyes was torn from its socket. So much pain, in fact, that it - on top of everything else - was enough to finally make him succumb to darkness.

A darkness Jimmy would never wake from again.

 


	5. Chance Moment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character(s): Rabastan Lestrange and Selwyn
> 
> Relationship(s): Rabastan Lestrange/Selwyn

He leans heavily against the rough brownstone of the townhouse his comrades reside in. Standing there, Padraic Selwyn searches for breath as his lungs grow tighter and tighter. Eventually, in his effort to get air through his constricted throat, he rips off his mask. Falling to his knees, the wet that still remains from the midday rain soaks into his pants. He knows, if he weren't choking, that he'd be disgusted by the damp cloth sticking to his skin.

But he  _is_  suffocating, so it all goes to the back of his mind as he curls in on himself, fingers clawing at his neck. A few moments later, as if by miracle or holy intervention, he begins to breathe again.

"Merlin…" he wheezes.

A pair of red-flecked boots come to pause in front of Padraic's swimming vision seconds later. "-kay?"

Lifting his head, he squints upward. "Huh?" he mumbles.

The person, still tall and neutrally posed, asks, "Are you okay, Selwyn?"

"Yes," he answers. Eyes darting to and fro, Padraic wonders where his mask has scuttled off to. He knows, during his attacks, he tends to knock things far away, but it is  _white_. Everything else is black and gray, which should make it shine like a diamond among coal.

Padraic jumps when a toe pokes at his knee. Lifting his gaze up once more, he sees that his fellow Death Eater is holding his mask out to him. "Here," they say.

Cautiously, Padraic takes it. "Thank you," he replies.

Their face turns away, stare fixating on something far off. "What caused your… _episode,_ " they ask.

Settling his mask back over his features, Padraic considers if he should ignore the question. Eventually, though, he decides that there isn't much more to lose. This fellow Death Eater has already seen him weak. What more will it cost him to say why? Not much, unless they plan to make him torture his little sister in the future.

They'll never do that, though. Their Lord will never allow them to torture an exemplary pureblood girl like Katerina.

"The girl we were… _you know,_ " he answers, uncomfortable with the idea of even voicing what exactly they'd been doing to the girl with eyes just like Katerina's.

Padraic's fellow Death Eater crouches beside him and remarks, "You've raped a dozen girls just like her, though."

He cringes beneath his mask, disgusted by the callousness of his fellow Death Eater's words. While some of his comrades may not have trouble naming the act for what it is, Padraic prefers to call just call it torture - the same as he does when speaking about hexing someone to death or  _crucioing_ them.

It is all the same, they are inflicting as many atrocities and pains against their victims as they can in hopes of teaching them (if they survive) that they are dirt and meant for no better treatment. Or, if those who resist their Lord's cause find them dead, they believe it will teach them just who they are challenging. That it will scare them and cause them to lower their wands.

The Death Eaters are powerful. They don't fear fighting dirty and they are vindictive. If you cross them, you'll get what is coming to you sooner or later. It is best those on the other side learn just who they are against before the Death Eaters figure out who they are and target them to make an example of.

"I know," Padraic finally says. "It's just her eyes, they were the same color as my sister's and when I saw them…"

Pushing his mask up, his fellow Death Eater, whom Padraic now recognizes as Rabastan Lestrange, nods solemnly. "I can understand that," he admits. "There's been a time or two, in a fight with the enemy, that Rodolphus left my side and people will start turning around and I'll hesitate to cast the killing curse because they look so much like him from behind. I'd hate to kill him by accident, you know? He's my brother."

It isn't the same as what Padraic has just experienced, but he appreciates Rabastan's attempt to empathize. They both know what it is like to have siblings, they both understand the way their siblings can get to their emotions and cause the same irrationality nothing else can.

"Thanks," Padraic says.

Nodding, Rabastan rises up and offers him a hand. "Come on, the others have all gone by now I'm sure and daylight's break is just a few minutes away."

Taking the hand, Padraic find himself grinning behind his mask when he realizes just how strong Rabastan is despite his lanky frame. "Lestrange…" he murmurs.

The man looks straight at him, blue-grey eyes patient.

"How would you like to come back to my place for a drink?" Padraic inquires meaningfully.

A smirk slices across Rabastan's face. "It'd be my pleasure," he answers.

Smiling in victory behind his mask, Padraic gives Rabastan's hand a squeeze before he steps close to side-apparate them to his home.

 _Oh, this is going to turn out brilliantly…_  Padraic thinks.

And it will - for a time. But, then, just like everything else around them, it'll fall apart faster than a house built on sand.


	6. A Change of Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character(s): Minerva McGonagall and Horace Slughorn
> 
> Relationship(s): N/A

Tea cooling before her, Minerva cast one last look over the dining student body before turning her attention to her copy of _The Daily Prophet_. Hopefully the students could behave themselves for fifteen minutes. Unfolding it, she began to skim the _Prophet_ for the morning's most interesting news. After a minute, Minerva's eyes paused on the bold, tantalizing heading of an article on the second page. It read:

**_Death Eater Captured!_ **

Bringing the paper closer, Minerva read the article with untamable curiosity. It wasn't common for a Death Eater to be captured in the heat of battle. When it did happen, however, they rarely seemed to stay caught. Aurors were still trying to figure that one out. A week ago, Minerva had read in _The Wizarding World News_ that the Ministry was looking into the off-chance that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's cronies had figured out a way around anti-apparition spells.

It was no secret that some of those that numbered among the Dark Cause were of the best to ever come out of Hogwarts and other European schools, such as Durmstrang. It made the possibility plausible and it was one of the things that the Ministry was interested in finding out if they managed to retain one of their prisoners.

Maybe now that they had one, they would find out. Though, the fact the Death Eater hadn't gotten away made Minerva wonder if they weren't aware of the trick their fellow Death Eaters used to escape the Ministry's hands.

Coming to the last paragraph, Minerva paused in consideration at the reveal of the captured Death Eater's name. Margaret Pucey. Why, Minerva was sure she had been a Slytherin just a couple short years ago! One of the quieter ones, she recalled. As well as better behaved than the likes of most of her classmates.

Just recalling the trouble Snape, the Wilkes twins and Rosier caused made her want to shudder.

What a shame, Minerva thought after a little more musing on the young woman. Miss Pucey had always seemed bright enough to keep herself out of trouble. Minerva wondered what had happened between Pucey's graduation from Hogwarts and her entering the world outside of the castle's walls.

Had someone she trusted lead her into trouble? Had she been pressured into joining the Death Eaters by family? Had Miss Pucey _chosen_ to join He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's cause?

Turning her head with the intention of striking up a conversation with the professor seated beside her, Minerva did not have time to stop the words as they left her mouth, "-have you read the article about the captured Death Eater on page two of the _Prophet_?"

Pausing mid-bite in his sausage, Horace stared at Minerva with large eyes. Internally, she winced. While Minerva wanted to discuss Miss Pucey's fall from grace, Horace was the last one she wanted to speak about it with. This was one of his students. Another Slytherin to count among the Death Eaters.

Putting down his fork, Horace gave a smile once he swallowed. "Yes," he answered. "I never thought they'd manage to get one alive!" he admitted. "The last few have all gotten away or ended up dead before they could be questioned."

Nodding, Minerva said, "That's right. What I'm interested in finding out is what they'll learn from Miss Pucey."

Horace's eyes dimmed. "I highly doubt there will be much they can gather from her. She was never one of the brightest witches in her year."

"Oh?" Minerva murmured. "She always did well enough in Transfiguration."

He shrugged. "Everyone must have a talent, I suppose," he said. "It certainly wasn't potions."

"She melted many cauldrons, did she?" Minerva asked with a bit of a smile.

Chuckling, he shook his head. "No, no, it's just that Miss Pucey never seemed to read directions carefully enough to create a potion to the write potency and she had little head for the theory. I was as surprised as anyone when she passed her OWls, given how poorly she'd done previously.

"The interesting thing was, though, after that Miss Pucey began the advanced lessons she picked up the strange habit of mistakenly brewing potions that were not what I requested. They were potions that always had a similar recipe to the one I asked for, but not what I wanted the students to be learning to make."

Alarm bells went off for Minerva. What had been the cause of Miss Pucey's sudden success? How mistaken had the young woman truly been when brewing? It was inconceivable for Minerva to believe that the girl had not _meant_ to brew the potions that she had. Sharply, Minerva asked Horace, "Do you truly believe it was an accident every time she brewed potions?"

Something akin to fear flashed in his eyes. "Why, yes," he answered with a forced laugh. "Why in Merlin's name would she go out of her way to brew things I did not assign? Every time she did, it hurt her grades and future. Purposefully doing such a thing would go against the Slytherin ethos of ambition, wouldn't you agree, Minerva?"

Pursing her lips, Minerva stared at her colleague. She was sure he knew more than he let on. Sometimes, because Horace kept so much about his students close to his chest, Minerva wondered just where his loyalties lay. Were they with Hogwarts and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's demise? Or was it all an act and did Horace actually hold allegiance to the Death Eater's cause?

"You know, Horace, you always laugh about things, but you always look afraid. It's like you're scared something you don't want to be known will be," she said.

All pretense of cheer left the man's features. "These are grim times, Minerva. Especially so for my students. There are very few who look at them with friendly faces anymore and not all of them have Death Eaters in their family or support He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's cause. They don't all deserve the judging frowns and accusatory glares that follow them in the halls and classrooms.

"Perhaps more of my students go on to join the Death Eater ranks than those of say, Gryffindor, but so many more do not. I will smile and laugh as I please because those on the edge of joining the Dark's side _need_ it. They need to know not everyone reviles them, they need to remember there are respected adults on their side. They need to know that they have someone to speak to that will keep what they've said confidential - no matter what it is they say."

Feeling terribly embarrassed by the end of Horace's speech Minerva could only look away and say, "I apologize, Horace, I never meant to imply I felt your cheer had a malevolent reason behind it."

A strained smile on his features once more, he nodded. "I know. Now, if you excuse me, I have to go finish preparing for the second years's potions lab today."

"Of course," Minerva replied, watching her colleague get up and leave.

Following Horace's shrinking back out of the Great Hall, Minerva considered what the man had to say about the critical stares his students received from other professors and students. While she knew there was little she could do to make others not judge the Slytherins unfairly, Minerva did know she could change how she looked at Horace's students.

Minerva could become another adult for them to trust and show them that there were people from _all_ houses that would treat them as individuals and not as products of their Hogwarts's houses.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think with a kudo/comment!


End file.
